Paper bead Madness

 *SIGH*
Once up on a time, long long ago when I was a wee lass, I remember spending too much effort buying magazines only so that I can slice'em up into strips to make beads out of them. I wasn't ever really successful and I had little to no patience to make it nice and when I did manage to make a nice bunch, I had no idea what to do with it. I wasn't sure if I liked it but I never gave it a fair chance because my next craft adventure - dried flower arrangement - consumed my brain space.

Recently, my 6 year old fan (who belongs to my craft buddy) became a crafter and went nosediving into paper beading and was all puffed up and frowning because her attention span was as short as mine had been and her beads were...not beady looking, as she so delicately put it. So in my total lapse of logic, so euphoric was I that she turned into a crafter(which meant another craft buddy for me!) I agreed to make her some and send it her way...she asked for the highest number she can count to (200) and I promised double, which was 400. Ridiculous, right? well, I should have known better because her brain soon became occupied with another crafting passion (knitting - which her mama is into now).

 Anyway I gingerly picked up where I left off - I wanted her to have some stars and triangular beads - which I had made hundreds of (because Asian girls love to make stars, crane eggs and cranes lol) but no amount of varnish hardened it enough for it to qualify as beads.
I used whatever paper I had lying around - lots of origami papers I glued together, random scraps, and even transit pamplets and transfers. I found that I particularly enjoyed the transit pamphlets because they were slightly thicker and gave interesting patterns-even the pen marks added a pattern which I enjoyed.

I enjoyed this activity so much that I put nail polish colour on them and goodness knows how many layers of varnish. I sent the first 2 batches of 100 beads away -which she made endless amounts of necklaces with (Apparently that was all that was considered jewelery)- which sent a jolt of excitement and prompted me to make more, better versions. THEN I fell off the crafting bandwagon for a week and during those 7 days her interest had moved on to knitting and I am left with 200 beads. These are them. Oh well. At least this time around I can understand why people love making'em!